alt.blocked: Verizon blocks access to whole USENET hierarchy

Verizon has announced how it plans to implement its end of an agreement to …

Verizon has released details of the agreement it and other ISPs signed last week to block access to Usenet groups that have been caught trafficking child pornography. Instead of simply blocking the handful of offending groups, however, Verizon has decided to enforce a blanket ban on what could be tens of thousands of completely innocent groups.

It all started when New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo enlisted the help of Verizon and other ISPs with his assault on child pornography spread through Usenet groups. A while ago, Cuomo's investigators submitted anonymous reports to ISPs like Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable about child pornography images stored on their servers and trafficked through Usenet groups. When the ISPs did nothing—failing to uphold their policy of taking swift action against peddlers of child porn—Cuomo's investigators threatened to charge the ISPs with fraud and deceptive business practices.

The ISPs bargained with Cuomo's office and came to an agreement in which each would pay $1.125 million to the Attorney General's office and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to fund further efforts. The ISPs also agreed to clean up their servers and block access to Usenet groups that are spreading child pornography, and Verizon has now offered details on exactly how it plans to enforce this ban. Originally, Cuomo's office claimed to have found child pornography on 88 of the 100,000-plus Usenet groups. Perhaps aspiring to win a G-rating from Utah, CNET reports that Verizon has opted to block not just the 88 offending groups, but a whole lot more. Verizon will provide access only to the "big 8," a group of hierarchies that are actively managed and governed by a more substantial set of rules than the banned groups.

The banned hierarchies include alt.*, a hierarchy known to be a haven for trading many forms of copyrighted media (fonts, wares, movies, TV shows, music, porn—you name it, it's there) and, of course, the child pornography Cuomo's office is after. alt.* and the other groups Verizon will censor are also home to plenty of harmless discussion groups, such as alt.tv.simpsons, alt.fan, alt.religion, and more. While Ars Technica commends the crusade against child pornography, ISPs agreeing to wipe a whole Usenet hierarchy off the digital map seems too much like using a sledgehammer to strike a nail.

One could argue that Usenet/newsgroups don't see quite the same traffic they used to back in the 80s and 90s. Even so, Verizon is now voluntarily agreeing to censor an entire network containing hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of legitimate and innocent discussions in the name of squashing a few problem areas. As we've suggested before, this form of overzealous approach could turn into a trend that enables governments to regulate content that is arbitrarily deemed harmful to the public good or even commercial interests.